In airplanes and buses in particular, air outlet devices are used to aerate seats—mostly from above. Thereby, the passenger is able to individually set the fresh air supply for his seat. Examples for such air outlet devices are described in DE-A-36 26 790, DE-A-2 347 541, DE-U-19 45 095, U.S. Pat. No. 2,516,805.
When assembling an air outlet device, it has turned out to be problematic to connect the panel of the air outlet device really tight with the air outlet mostly arranged within the panel in the form of a ball joint. So far, two methods for mounting the air outlet comprising an air nozzle with a holder therefor in the panel have existed. The air outlets are either mounted in a receiving opening of the panel by means of a threaded ring, which, however, is troublesome, since an additional element, namely the threaded ring, is necessary therefore. Moreover, the mounting is relatively troublesome for this reason. Furthermore, the connection with a threaded ring will never be able to be completely airtight. Therefore, screwed air outlet devices are not suitable for a supply by means of so-called air diffuser boxes continuously supplying a plurality of air outlet devices with flowing fresh air, since, caused by minor leakages of the threaded ring, a certain airflow would continuously escape from the air outlet device.
A second possibility for assembling air outlet devices consists in glueing the holder of the air outlet in the receiving opening of the panel. It is true that these air outlet devices are tight, i.e., no undesired air flows escape, but they have disadvantages during manufacture. After the glue has been applied during manufacturing and the air outlet has been set into the receiving opening of the panel, the glue has to cure. During this curing time, the air outlet devices have to be steadied so that the parts glued together (holder and panel) keep their positions during curing. Otherwise, undesired air gaps may develop. Since the air outlet devices are withdrawn from the manufacturing process during the curing time, the production time is undesirably extended correspondingly.